The Orchard

The Sizing Machine

The Cooler

The Cider Press

The Store

Orchard in Bloom

Replaced sometime in 2018, this sizing machine came out of a company in Grafton ND. It was originally designed as a sweet potato sizer but has custom rollers that allow it for use with apples. The apples fall through the gaps in the rollers as the move down the line and open up.

The largest part of our building at 40' X 50', our cooler functions the same as your refrigerator at home. However unlike your fridge, we are able to move large 24 bushel bins of apples in and out of it. At Peak season, our cooler could potentially hold up to 4,800 bushels of apples.

This cider press works by turning discarded apples into a pulp and feeding it onto a cloth conveyor. From there the cloth is folded and "pressed" in-between several large rollers where the juice is extracted from the pulp.

Depending on the type of apple, it takes 1 bushel of apples to make 2 1/2 to 3 gallons of cider. This press is able to make roughly 250 to 300 gallons of cider per hour.

The building and store were built in 1965, however there were trees that were planted before then. The current owners purchased this property in the summer of 1997. There are many old trees on the property but some of the oldest are assumed to be 70 years of older.

There are about 35 acres of apple trees and 20 acres of pumpkins. We have about 25 different varieties of apples however most are not listed due to lack of popularity or time of season.

Pictures from blooms past. The trees typically go into bloom sometime in mid to late May. The bloom time is based off warm weather (a certain amount of degree days) and the warmer it is in spring, the sooner we get blossoms. Once the trees go into bloom, the typically stay in bloom for about a week or more depending on temperature.